Healthy living incentives draw seemingly unlikely foes

November 05, 2009|Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- Who could object to rewarding people who quit smoking, lose weight or start to exercise? The American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association, for starters. Some companies now charge lower insurance premiums to workers who meet benchmarks for healthy living. The Senate's health care overhaul legislation would expand the trend. But instead of cheering the proposal, some patient-advocacy and health groups are worried that it would mean higher rates for less-fit Americans, possibly pricing them out of their employers' insurance plans. "It is a way of cherry picking," said Dick Woodruff, senior director of federal affairs for the American Cancer Society. Critics of the Senate proposal also say that giving special treatment to those who meet a company's fitness standards could undercut one of the marquee promises of the Democrats' proposed overhaul: preventing employers and insurers from discriminating against people on the basis of their health status and pre-existing medical conditions. Under current law, companies can discount insurance premiums by 20 percent if employees meet benchmarks for weight, smoking or other aspects of their health. Earlier this year, two Senate committees, as part of the health care overhaul, voted to allow such cuts to go as high as 50 percent. Leading the charge for the idea is Safeway, the giant grocery store chain, which already has adopted an incentive program that includes health premium reductions. Last year, the company began to offer a 20 percent premium discount to its nonunion workers who quit smoking, went on a diet, brought down their blood pressure and cut their cholesterol. Critics in the labor movement say the incentive scheme is a backdoor way for companies to cut their costs by driving less-healthy workers out of the insurance group. Indeed, most of Safeway's union workers, who are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers and make up some 95 percent of the company's work force, have not embraced the idea in their own health plan.